A Developmental Milestone

Blaze called me into his room last night to see what he had made and I was so excited that I ran to get the camera and took a picture of it. He had built a fort for his clothespin soldiers, using the wooden blocks.

O.K., I know most of the people reading this aren't going to understand why this is a big deal, so let me explain. This is the first structure with four walls that Blaze has ever built. He plays with his blocks all the time, but his usual block creations are either towers that he can throw things at, to knock them down, or roads for his toy cars to drive on. The idea of constructing a building is completely new to him.

For those of you who don't know, Blaze has mild Cerebral Palsy and Epilepsy. The doctors believe that something went wrong during the first trimester of my pregnancy with him, that caused a thin wiggly cleft on the left side of his brain (the technical term for this condition is schizencephalic cleft), near the speech center. This injury affects the use of the right side of his body, so he is very left handed. His right leg used to be extremely weak, but years of therapy have helped a lot, so that most people never notice anymore. He has a wonderful group of therapists who have worked with him since he was three years old and we've seen tremendous progress, but he's still developmentally delayed.